Yesterday during a conference call one of my other phones rang and I sent it to voicemail, and blew it off until later in the evening. I didn't recognize the man, but he addressed the message to Jen or Jane and because I had forgotten which key I press for delete on Verizon—the same as T-Mobile's save, no less—I continued to listen. He said he loves his intended listener and hopes she isn't avoiding him, went over his day and mentioned missing her so much he kept looking at his pictures of her. On a barstool and fur skin, but I didn't mean to pry. Afterward I paused and thought, what if it weren't Jane, and I had all this time been involved in a homosexual relationship I can't remember, Jonathan Hoag-style? Could that explain my support for gay rights? Is there such a thing as fear of leading a double life?
There was a great noodle place in San Francisco's Chinatown that Joseph took me to once, but I could never remember where it was since going back. Maybe it, too, was a victim of economic blight. Anyway, I had a dream last night I met up with him again and this time we went to a little-known place that didn't look the least bit like a restaurant inside, and whose proprietor was some sort of Chinese artist who also worked on classic cars. He wore a parka and had a sharp, bespectacled eyes beneath his White head, and belied my temptation to describe him further with the trite word "wizened." There weren't any tables, but he quickly threw one together for us as he prepared our meal. Behind our seats was a wall of garage doors, and Joseph pushed the button to one, causing the decorative glassware hanging from it to drop from their precarious perches. I tried to catch them as they fell, making quite a show for other guests, but ran out of hands and missed several. One that broke open wasn't for sale but filled with a condiment.
I'm watching Sci-Fi Channel's Hulk marathon at home today and it dawned on me that every show's geared towards exposing poor Bill Bixby to the most maddening people—one-dimensional thugs, bloodthirsty mobs and drivers who don't pick up hitchhikers at the end but can't help but hit him when he's trying to cross the street—and situations, of course, to bring out the big green guns to deal with them. I've long since lost my perspicacity, but is there a form of drama akin to comedy or tragedy I can portmanteau into something like sitcom or sit-trag (aka the Korean soap), which instead of going for laughs or tears, induces anger? The neocon agenda could do it.
We got back pretty late Friday night, and the garage was quiet, so I was surprised to hear the elevator open in the distance. Even more so to see our old HOA president, a 60-something retiree emerge with a younger Black woman in a bright red and white outfit that otherwise looked very short because of all the leg showing. This is as much of his companion I could ascertain as he walked her to his car in the other direction, chattering away; his long-winded nature was what made him an outstanding candidate for the position. But who am I to comment on a single fellow's choice of weekend activity? I can only imagine if he put a cover over his bird cage for her.
Had a dream I parked my motorcycle on the side of a street in a seaside village, returned to it shortly thereafter to find a young man seated behind the rear wheel with a pair of pliers, backpack dropped to his side. I struck the would-be thief on the side of the head, felling him to the ground and continued to beat him viciously from above. He was pale-skinned and his belly bloated under his Blue T-shirt, and lie still after my blows. My arms grew weak, so I swung a bag of heavy items (seemed like combination locks) I happened to be carrying onto his listless head. But—and while it's not rare for me to feel during my overnight reveries, perhaps it's this particular sensation that struck me; more so that it stuck after waking—I noticed that the satisfaction of delivering punishment had gone. His hand somehow moved below and activated a message that contained almost testamentary instructions amidst a website-like menu, which left me wondering less about the merits of vengeance than whether it was even safe to attack a criminal armed with tools, or if someone in such a dangerous line of work might guard against a development like this. With maybe a panic button that, pressed or not, would trigger a getaway blast in his bag or call for help.
Remember the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Dr. Crusher says the crew is going mad because that week's spatial anomaly prevents them from entering REM sleep and dreaming? Well, the opposite's been happening to me lately. I can't close my eyes without re-opening them to the HDTV in my mind. And it's not like the programming selection keeps me coming back for more; this morning I was shopping for clothing for a Homer Simpson doll, selecting an orange clip-on necktie to try instead of the blue one. They were individually packaged and hanging in the middle of a supermarket aisle. This afternoon I had a nap and all I did was take a shit. Last night I got off a bus with Iris and Alvin and was amazed by the immersive virtual experience demonstrated by Wii Mario Kart (when I probably should've been crediting it to the other high-profile release, GTAIV), re-creating an entire city for us to walk around in. My old buddy Reynold and I began discussing how this was even possible given the system's limited processing power, and he proposed that I might actually be witnessing the future, as part of his recent time-travel experiments.
Died the other day. He was 102. Not bad for dropping all that acid.
The NFusion's channel labels work now, after changing the Primary Network setting from DISH to Bell, and perusing my many choices this weekend (as far as my guide goes, limited as it is to the next hour's programming) what should I happen across on the "Action" network but Mortal Kombat: Conquest from years back! If my life can be summed up as one guilty pleasure after another, then this has to be a Casey Novak case where the defendant loses it on the stand and has to be carried out in restraints.
Like I told 비, I think I make myself sick to justify staying at home for work (and waking up too late). The only real difference telecommuting—apart from the savings to the environment, my gas tank and all around—is my slightly less comfortable non-Aeron metal folding chair from Target. And multitasking to cable and the millions of gil I spent forcing down my HP for a 1339 Flare, not to mention the hours last night popping the Asklepios NM.
Quite entertaining, from the anachronistic 80's theme music to the stirred memories of reading early 20th-century French mysteries not only of Gaston Leroux like Le mystère de la chambre jaune but also those featuring Arsène Lupin (and Fantômas!), Petit Larousse in hand. In fact, I had a dream I was being quizzed on French pronouns and prepositions this morning. Then I woke up parched; I swore it was a visit from Dehydron, who's less an ally of Homer's Gamblor than one of those creepy aliens from Ultraseven.
After assembling the dish last week, I finally dug up some coax and hooked it into the receiver, with mixed results. Good: got a decent signal, as worried I was about not facing due South. 500+ channels, 2% of them pr0n. Good enough: it's only to (presumably, from all the French) a Canadian satellite, the labels don't match and guide doesn't work. Meanwhile Time Warner continues to bill me, according to the guy behind the bulletproof window, because they haven't gotten around to disconnecting me from "the pole."
I've got some bloggin' to do about my trip to the East Coast, but I thought I'd try one of those reverse gimmicks (which I saw recently—oh yeah, Michael Clayton; I liked Clooney a lot in the Solaris remake, but this was an Academy Award contender? Had nothing on The Insider from a while back) and relate an incident on the freeway this afternoon: I merged onto the 91 in front of a headlit van driven by a large red-haired woman who was leaned over as if reaching under the seat. At least two car lengths separated us, I signaled in advance and moved over slowly enough but saw in the mirror that she gave me the finger! I then felt entitled to hypothesize she was holding up a side of her body as she swung into the exit lane to the right, anyway. Was a big oaf on the return flight, too, who rested his arm over his shoulder and covered my Red™ screen with his clumsy-looking hand. Ironic that most the people in the cities, with the exception of a fascist Amtrak employee who barked back, "don't shush me" to a customer, weren't nearly as rude. Nice Black fellow who saw us get off the shuttle from Dulles being led around by the weight of our backpacks kindly directed us to the nearest McDonald's.
$62/month for hundreds of channels displaying a message telling me to subscribe to them? I'll try my luck with FTA. Way I figure, equipment will pay for itself by fall. What's left on TV for me, anyway? I have a sneaking suspicion all that Law & Order before bed is making me dream so much lately, keeping me "watching" and from getting a good night's sleep.
Pacifica regular Glen Ford denounced Barack Obama’s call for a dialogue on race relations this morning, and instead demanded that the millions of his brothers and sisters currently incarcerated be set free—regardless of the legitimacy of their convictions, and for whatever charges, apparently. Never mind all their victims, right? And at the other end of the spectrum from these crazy fucks who ask for the most ridiculous shit are the mindless sheep who do everything that’s asked of them, like buy into (read: pay for) our shitty guv’mint’s ridiculous war on ter’rists. Who cares who’s Black or White; seems to me we should be more concerned we’re not ゲタ'd by the insanity on both sides. We are so on the inside of the asylum looking out.
It’s not at all what you think; there’s a tightness in mine lately that’s been causing me some distress, frightening me of being yet another unexpected young victim of a heart attack (like a girl I knew in high school); last night, however, I got on the treadmill and pushed my rate to 197+ remarkably without need for EMS. And because I noticed it first while driving I considered the culprit was the air and changed in-cabin microfilter finally after 60K only to have it occur anytime while seated. Could it be poor posture, or atrophy of my upper body? Maybe I need to do more pushups.
The Channel 13 11-o'clock news anchors read viewer e-mail before letting me watch Detectives Goren & Eames, and tonight's topic (announced, presumably, earlier in the hour) was what you'd put in a time capsule. Tonight there was one from someone with the same first name as an old co-worker to the effect of, "Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, so people of the future would know what primitive life was like." I made the connection because the fucking moron's got just about the only car I've seen outside of Texas with a 2004 Bush bumpersticker. He once drove me to a department lunch in it, and I felt like an embarrassed kid getting dropped off at school in some wreck my peers of primitives would tease me about.
I couldn't seem to close my eyes to sleep this weekend without reopening them inside and watching myself create words like this and "seketae" (as chat ID's, apparently), or try to survive in a world overrun by zombies; last night they chased me and a partner up an old building but we rigged platforms to drop us below. His worked and he escaped them, but when I pulled on my rope, nothing happened, and I was left feeling more embarrassed than anything. My audience and I stared at each other awkwardly until my prodding let out the air in my mattress and I fell through the floor, slowing my descent by grabbing onto each floor I passed. That somehow worked.
Friday afternoon I almost put my fist through the windshield coming back from Chick Fil-A because, I swear, I got held up at every single traffic light, at least a dozen in a row. And my route wasn't some bicyclist's, avoiding major thoroughfares by staying on back streets where you'd expect them to be against you. So this weekend I actually began counting how many times I got the green. (I know what you're thinking, that this is as weak a stunt as I've ever pulled just for the sake of a blog entry, but the way I figured, my pre-Alzheimer's brain ought to be good for a running tab of two numbers between intersections and processing whatever else it needs, driving instructions, any possible change in plans for the remainder of the trip, reminders that I'm neither dreaming nor playing Grand Theft Auto, until I reach my destination—and it'd keep me too preoccupied to get angry.) I stopped last night at 65/100. Should this mildly reassuring figure serve as closure, or should I continue my study by factoring in time of day and area?
My startling discovery shopping last night: Americans are fat. So much so that clothing manufacturers don't bother with inseams longer than the waist. It's not as if I have Marfan syndrome, but searching through stacks of sizes like 38x32 helps me sympathize with victims of affirmative action.
A few weeks ago I was at 자기야's and came across 七人の侍 on one of her alien DirecTV channels and watched it twice. Well, on and off, but it's that fucking good. And since you rarely see it, at least in US media, without mention of The Magnificent Seven remake (I remember a Village Voice article, their original panning of Ran I think it was, written by someone so uninformed as actually to get the chronology reversed), and myself having grown up in a time when there weren't whole networks dedicated to retro cinema trying to fill their pre-infomercial airtime and seen the shorter, schedule-friendly Western first, I've been comparing the two since viewing them side-by-side …well, on and off, one between the intermission of the other. Sure, Sturges didn't have the extra hour that Kurosawa had, but you know he still wouldn't have filled it with women face-planting in the mud like so many highlight reels of MXC. His farmers are clad in White, Yul Brynner's hair never grows in, and the bad guys begin the inexplicable trend that'd keep James Bond alive for too many movies of letting their enemies go. No one runs, there's hardly any crying. Hell, even the Savage Five—which I couldn't find last week at Media King—had a scene with the broken comb inspired by Rikichi's wife to offer some sense of the tragic situation.
Driving's always a challenge in them; either the car has a mind of its own or the roads become unnavigable to a fault. And for some other deep-rooted reason I often find myself back on the streets in Providence's East Side, which I recreate as a tight grid of old houses on an incline from Hope to hump and descend to Benefit below. When I'm not saving the world, carnal impulses will have me stalking from one to another in desperate search of prey, but earlier this evening I'd watched myself on video (played back on my shitty PocketPC, no less) with former MILF-now-pariah Karen King—I had to, because I couldn't remember? One turn and as Johnny Yune went from landlocked downtown Houston to a boat pier in They Still Call Me Bruce, I was by the water, then in it. Seemed shallow enough, but when I put the XTerra into 4WD to reach shore, I was virtually submerged. Someone in control then drained it all, and wouldn't you know it, the "lake" was a room.
I changed my "complimentary" digital tier from Choice to Variety last weekend after watching an episode of BBCAmerica's Torchwood and decided it couldn't possibly be better than the dramas on AZN. And even if other installments were to prove me wrong (after all, it took a second viewing before warming to The Office), I thought, I'd catch up via the free BBC on Demand channel. No such luck, as it seems I've been locked out of downloads from unsubscribed sources. Given the service there's not much ground to argue, but it's only one more incentive to pirate satellite.
Holy-shit moments always make for good writing. Or in my case lately, any. This morning after swinging over to exit at Carmenita and somehow still at the high rate of speed required to do so, I noticed a small tabby cat between two lanes in the middle of the freeway. Its body contorted when a car went by, but failed to deliver the gruesome memory I was expecting to take away and, as I kept watch in the rearview mirror (what I certainly don't remember at all is continuing to drive), bounded to the side safely.
미사장 (미 as in 미친, get it) insists on making a case of my defection, with little regard for the freedoms our state imbues in at-will employment and courts imply in their disapproval of solicitation restrictions, much less her own company's hiring practices. Two months after she snuck in a replacement from the Aurora well, she's still calling us out for the "broken promise" not to steal me away, then in the same day accept the explanation, only to be struck with a mood swing the kind that must accompany the menopause her fellow 아줌마 there accused her of for keeping the office a meat locker and comparing the situation with a breakup between a couple and whether or not it's right for one of them afterwards—let's assume it's the fella, shall we—to date his ex's friend. This drama is over for you, crazy lady. Meet me and the kids five years later at the Towne Center Trader Joe's.
If Windows Mobile is any indication, I'm beginning to understanding the iPhone's raison d'être. How could anyone in their right mind could consider this a GUI? Stylus is a throwback to the Palm era; I think I can no longer wield one except for Nintendo games. ActiveSync seems to have a mind of its own, "advanced" settings never are, and this might be the hardware, but the second one I'm on also lights up for no discernible cause whatsoever. And the coverage of Verizon's EV-DO network (which varies depending upon your table at McDonald's) has me wanting to kill that guy in their ads.
Okay, Irene, you were right about this one. I was almost certain I'd hate it from the cheesy premise, but there's something sinister, definitely less K-drama and more Crying Game, about the way the main character falls for a woman he thinks is a man. And who am I to resist when he finally tells her, 니가 남자건, 외계인이건, 이제 상관 안 해.
ヴェラ would tell me now and then how she thinks she a nightmare ruined her sleep, but can't remember what about. (Probably the realization who she's with.) I guess she doesn't have my capacity to preserve an imagination corrupted by comics and junk: like yesterday I was faced with the impossible task of fighting a god. He was a giant, and took a form similar to Galactus, swatting us like so many action figures. Just when it appeared we were making progress by climbing up His back, He threw at us weird powers beyond our comprehension—and therefore, expectation—like turning my partner's own bones on me to drum special frequencies against my skin that would take over my mind. This was the Fantastic Four villain, however, so I must've decided to get this over with by bringing in the Ultimate Nullifier, represented by a sort of puzzle made up of metal sticks that came together at the hands of Reed Richards's super-for-human-brain into the final M-shape. Pull the handles apart, and it was all over for the universe!
I deserve everything I have coming to me: I care now more about what happened to my Hookups Transformers T-shirt (from during that lull between the 80's and when the logos started appearing on merchandise in mall stores with no purchasing guidance whatsoever) than the administration making yet another mockery of the highest laws of the land.
I have an account with a bank in Texas that has all of $1.23 in it, whittled down through minimum-balance fees from a hundred or so (why it was opened in the first place I've lost track), which I am reminded of by a statement mailed to me every month, more often than not accompanied by newsletters and credit card & loan adverts. Surely the cost of the paper and postage for the past several years must've registered some alarm to discontinue this service? And after a half-an-hour hold-time to reach one of their representatives, she still wanted to keep me as a customer by offering to refund $10 in those charges—which yes, would be gone again in a matter of weeks. For me to close it out and do my part to save the world (and my mailbox) from the bureaucratic waste? I'd have to send in a written request, with at least a 41¢ stamp. I think I've extended my day's effort to the limit.
Last week while waiting over an hour for a table at that ridiculously popular Anjin 焼肉 place in OC, I noticed a "INTERNET&MANGA&TAPIOCA 漫画＆ネットカフェ」 across the street. Our only exposure to this sort of establishment was from 結婚できない男, but unlike the character-developing library-type environment depicted there, it was just a small sitting room with a dozen Ikea loungers cordoned off from a counter of overpriced snacks. The full cultural experience would cost $3 each for membership, $3 for the first half-hour and $2 for the next before I would tear myself away from 闘将!!拉麺男 #4 (their selection can't be criticized, however) realizing at our pace reading Japanese, we're better off just buying the books.
Saw a White Jetta this morning with a Black bumpersticker that read, simply, "End of the World" (looked like Albertus font, with "of" over "the"). There was a meek-looking man in a plaid shirt driving, with a large wooden cross hanging from his mirror. He looked at me as I passed, having been with him for the mile or so since I made my daily illegal turn into the lane next to his from my ramp before the intersection. I wondered where he was off to work, and why he'd even feel the need these last days of ours.
So much for years of saving up the Sony Card points. Not even two weeks and their Spiderman-font'd entertainment hub which doesn't lower itself to say PlayStation when it boots (DNLA-equipped media servers on my network: 0) loses what I guess to be its power supply. Um, Folding@Home felt rewarding while it lasted. And I think, if I looked real carefully—crossed my eyes like I'm doing one of those old hidden art puzzles, either or—I could tell a slight difference between the 1080p WB logo from my only Blu-Ray disc and the upscaled one on The Yakuza. Worst.game system.ever.
The way I see it, I'm 2-0 vs. death. Eating a Six Dollar Burger Combo (with lemonade, of course—the one day I set aside for soda comes next week) afterwards is just about the best feeling next to a shower.
First updating the software basically reformats the thing, wiping thousands of miles of running data which can't be reloaded from the nikeplus site. (So it's there why?) Then I fall for the ol' leaving-workout-going trick again, because unless you yank the iPod from its opaque sleeve and make sure it's stopped, you can't rely on a voice confirmation that's not always available. So my time—bad enough as it is, figuring out the antiquated treadmill at LA Fitness—includes a lovely stroll out to the parking lot.
Houston goes down again, and while I saw them trailing on a TV screen in a lounge at the theater Saturday night, I don't really care. (Spider-man 3, BTW, a big mess with no less than three villains and at least as many unnecessary scenes. Why couldn't Sam Raimi have made one last movie about the Lizard, and just the Lizard?) In fact, I didn't even find out until just now. They could lose every game they ever play again. I'm just.that.happy.
Not until late last night did I finally get to see this on HBO in the hotel room, how many years since it was released, so is it any wonder I'd be anything but disappointed? I actually liked the FPS sequence, but the direction id took with the series in general, deciding it was less about Hell on Mars and more Japanese survival horror, blew a brilliant opportunity to use the same perspective for a showdown with a rocket launcher against cyberdemons under red skies. And there was even a hint at an interesting explanation for it all, too, with this 24th-chromosome nonsense suggesting a Kirby-esque Eternal vs. Deviant evolution for mankind, and, and… then the Rock took over. I'm so gonna bust the N64 outta storage when I get back.
3 out of 5-6 runners at the track today had nanos with them, including an older Asian fellow who was like a machine and must've lapped me twice over five miles. I'm certain the calibration's off, but I was too tired to reset it afterwards… in fact, I've been feeling quite anemic a lot lately, noticeably at lunch last Friday and now, threatening to throw me off for the workweek ahead. Could be the drop in my Mountain Dew consumption by upwards of 75%, the added "weight" from the hair color, or just world-weariness.
Don't know if it was seeing me twice these past two weeks or because they had to re-wrap my punctured burrito (I knew the tortilla was left on the grill for far too long), but I got my second meal on the house there today. Was on quite the roll, in fact, until driving all the way out to Monterey Park only to discover Media King's next restock is due tomorrow, being let down by The Office Christmas special and realizing the Xbox 360 wasn't doing anything for me.
didn't think we had the time to wait in line, and you know what, she was right, because in the mad rush to get out afterward, I noticed all their posts were very much unmanned and very much not change-equipped.
I'm 
It's the spasms that worry me the most, like Fred G. Sanford's proverbial "Big One" that'll come as the result of too big a shock. 
You can't left-click without loading a quotation from fellow actors about the lost potential of Heath Ledger (though I'm the first to admit—and not too strongly, of course—that I have yet to see 
Been eating this by the box since college, so no one knows the "green smile" (was The Green Slime the movie with the mystery alien woman whose name wasn't even revealed in the credits, because that always creeped me out) like I do, but last night I must've pushed a piece of 青海苔 under the gum above my front tooth brushing afterwards and took nearly half-an-hour of careful flossing to extract it.
(Interesting coincidence that the Simpsons at 11 was one of the last greats where Luann Van Houten divorces Kirk and rides off with "Pyro" in his Atlasphere.) Twenty years later and it's the same thing. Maybe in another two hundred we'll get to see contestants face off against these real-life Mortal Kombat characters to the death, in true homage to our Roman forefathers. Could be a way for everyone else in the world to vent and try and put the hurt on the Red, White & Blue without resorting to Islamofascism, trade embargoes or 
Amazon.com Wish List—in fact, I'll leave the link up since everyday's a holiday for someone with 
The "Colossal MP3 Player" I came across at Walgreens in the Village (and must've ignored its 
비 there with me
Anachronistic local network 
Strangely enough, a project at work led me to buy another record album frame like the one I have hanging in my bathroom with the cover of the Barbarella soundtrack I paid an embarrassing amount of cash for at a convention in Austin almost 20 years ago (and got later on CD at Comic-Con for considerably less). I had The Prisoner's in mind, dug out my vinyl crate in storage, then saw this spectacular picture of pre-Kill Bill revival David Carradine, so I put Jane Fonda to rest.
One of the ladies who works in logistics lives all of a mile from work and yet every afternoon I see her driving away wearing a getup like this. Now I don't keep up so I wouldn't know if the topic of Taiwanese sunlight prevention gear has been given the blogosphere treatment, but it's certainly due. And it's not just confined to headgear, either; I seem to recall coming across a pair of those sleeve protectors in my mom's car years ago as well. (It's funny no matter how the luxury sedan will sport fine Corinthian leather, the outfit'll be Chanel or accessories Gucci, they'll still match them up with those baggy things on their arms that look like they were sewn together with leftover material from 
I kept thinking "tail" when I heard this expression on 환상의 커플, I guess from 꼬리, the way language memory works for me. And a 꼬라지같은 tail's what my TV's got now, with the oversized wire loom organizing all the cables from the back. Maybe I should've left them hanging free and reminding me of this monster from Voyage into Space. Why wasn't that ever on DVD, either?
